One result of the advent and explosion of the Internet is that document processing has evolved from a task performed most often by a single user into a commonly collaborative effort in which a number of people are involved. For instance, a team of individuals may be responsible for preparing a document containing a business proposal, a presentation, or financial information contained in a spreadsheet. However, because the genesis of document processing typically involved a single user working on a single document, many of the current document creation and processing applications, such as word processors, spreadsheets, and presentation programs, do not contain robust tools for allowing multiple users to collaborate during the creation and editing of an electronic document. As a result, these tools make it very difficult for groups of people to effectively work together to create and edit electronic documents.
One limitation of current tools for document processing stems from the fact that different users often are responsible for different parts of the document. However, current applications for creating and processing electronic documents allow permissions to edit the document to be assigned only on a per document basis. As a result, a user may inadvertently change portions of the document for which they are not responsible. These changes may go unnoticed by the person actually responsible for the changed section and may result in the delivery of an incorrect document.
Another limitation of current document processing application programs result from the fact that restrictions cannot be placed on the identity of the users that are able to edit certain form fields. For instance, a form may be created within a word processing application program document that allows a user to request reimbursement for business expenses. Fields may exist within the form for identifying the business expense, the amount to be reimbursed, and for a supervisor's approval. However, current word processing application allow any user to fill in any of the form fields. The fields cannot be restricted to a particular user. For instance, the field for supervisor approval could be filled in by any user and not restricted to just supervisors.
One other limitation of current document processing application programs stems from the fact that users cannot be prohibited from editing certain hidden markup, such as extensible markup language (“XML”) tags. Documents today can be marked up with XML tags to identify the structure of the document. However, users can freely edit the XML tags if they have the authority to edit the document. The XML tags are really just another type of content in the document, and may be edited freely. As a result, the user may be permitted to destroy the specified structure of the document set forth by the XML tags.
It is with respect to these considerations and others that the present invention has been made.